


The Ghost Train

by Hillsofuhhtennessee



Category: KISS (US Band)
Genre: Amusement Parks, Dark Rides, Demon in human form, Fires, Gen, Horror, chase scenes
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-16
Updated: 2021-01-16
Packaged: 2021-03-14 12:09:55
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,229
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28795182
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Hillsofuhhtennessee/pseuds/Hillsofuhhtennessee
Summary: You’ve moved in to a run-down Rust Belt town, where half of main street is boarded up.  You go to the local old amusement park, known for its classic rides if not its maintenance standards and find it an apocalyptic wasteland.  Save for a shifty, nose-picking ride operator on the Ghost Train.   You take a ride.
Kudos: 4





	The Ghost Train

**Author's Note:**

> Exact time period here is ambiguous, Gene’s described as a student but 70s-80s is probably more accurate to the industrial decline pictured. Setting is vaguely based on Conneaut Lake, an old Pennsylvania amusement park known for its classic rides and post-apocalyptic crowds even pre-pandemic. The technology on the ride probably should date it to at least the 50s-60s based on its crude animatronics, but it could be older and just refurbished/updated later.

You were new to the place. It was the rotting husk of a Rust Belt factory town, half the businesses on Main Street boarded over and abandoned, yet elegantly designed under the plywood covers. A massive deserted train station loomed over downtown. This had been a prosperous place once, even if was crumbling before your eyes. 

You figured you’d get a feel for the area by visiting the local amusement park. Be a tourist for a bit. But what kind of tourist would come to a dump like this? Be a bored factory worker from the heyday of the streetcar, then. Funland was an old park known for its classic rides and being frozen in time since its postwar height, for better and worse. Same decor, everything run at full speed by a local student with a big lever, nothing restored either, and the occasional fire. 

It had once been a readily accessible park on the end of a trolley line, but now was wedged between major roads in an area of town that had seen better days. Several mostly-empty motels hung around it, their VACANCY sign just redundant at this point. The Art Deco gates hung open. It didn’t have a gate price like Six Flags, just the classic ride tickets. Beyond the entrance, it just looked like a glorified picnic grove. Nicely wooded, various pavilions and benches. A filled in pool and locked up dance hall. And then there were the tired old rustbuckets that were the rides. A boarded up Tunnel of Love. A silent, rusted Whip. A stagnant carousel piping out a half-tempo Me and My Shadow. An impressive-looking rack of bumper cars under a pavilion crushed in half by a fallen tree. Some kind of ferris wheel creaking in the breeze. A wooden roller coaster hidden in the trees, lurched to its side and covered in ivy. A circle swing sitting rock-still, its chains heavy with hopeless depression. A creaking, rattling Tumble Bug spinning a single delighted child around. Wow, a sign of life. Across from that was the barbershop pole of a roller coaster called the Toboggan, covered in weakly blinking fair lights. That one actually looked pretty modern, just hastily placed and clearly bought off from a carnival.

You wandered along the midway, disappointed yet intrigued by the lack of operators or humans in general. There were a scarce few faces in the handful of open ticket booths and funnel cake stalls, but otherwise just the giggling Tumble Bug kid going round and round. And a terrifying laughing clown dummy with a plaque explaining how it was the only thing that survived the funhouse burning down years ago. 

And there, at the end, was the Ghost Train. And it front of it, the only ride operator you ever saw there. He was picking his nose while deep in thought reading a thick book. He slowly rose his gaze as he heard your footsteps.

“Ah, finally one of the living.”

“Wash your hands you unsanitary bum.”

“If you’re bothered by a bit of rostrum rooting, I’d suggest you turn back now and get out of this tetanus trap, my dear.”

He chuckled to himself and rolled his huge, dark eyes. If you hadn’t had such a... glamorous introduction to the man, he would have fit the grim, tired atmosphere of the place perfectly. He had the hard, heavy features of an old stone carving. He didn’t look that old, but had a rubbery, jowly, droopy look to his face like it was a sagging rubber mask, his face half-covered in messy brown curls. He had a certain cartoony abstracted quality to his expressions and exaggerated proportions. He looked like he could have hopped out of one of the old-timey paintings on the walls of the Ghost Train.

“How many tickets for this one?”

“Three. But if you just give me the money it’ll save you the walk and I won’t say anything.”

He winked. You looked around cautiously and shrugged, handing it over when you confirmed the coast was clear.

“So, you like working at this old dump because you can just read all day and laze around?”

“Oh, I’m not a lazy person, but yes, it’s useful to be able to do schoolwork here. I’m a theology student, you know. But I also like ‘this old dump’ over other crappy jobs because of the history.”

“What do you mean? It’s just a beat up amusement park?”

“You know, there used to be little amusement parks like this everywhere back in the 20s. There were more roller coasters in America than perhaps in the whole world today. What’s left now is probably just one percent. One percent of the dark rides, one percent of the funhouses, one percent of the twirl-and-hurls. One percent of the carousels too. But. Consider that the Coney Island style of carousels is deeply rooted in Jewish woodcarving traditions from Eastern Europe. And that one percent becomes so precious compared to the near zero that survived back there.”

You went quiet. You hadn’t expected things to take that kind of turn.

“My apologies for going in on something so heavy in a happy place like this. My interest in ghost trains and haunted houses is more just because I love old horror movies and how these rides bring them to life. They’re crude, yes, but it’s an amusement park and it’s more a place for corny demons to jump out at you than for deep reflection on psychological horror. And no two are ever quite the same, so when this park finally goes under, this’ll be a real ghost train in all but its riders’ memories.”

“Does it ever get depressing basically working dark ride hospice?”

“Not really. Any day aboveground is a good one, as my mom always says. So even a day when one moody teenager rides this thing and comes out unimpressed is something to me. We’ve only got one maintenance guy here and with the age of everything, you never what day will be an attraction’s last. Now enough chitchat, time to send you off. I’m overdue for lunch.”

He kicked a pedal and the lapbar sprang up. He beckoned to the seat, locked the cage over you, and kicked another pedal to send you off.

The car shot off and around a hairpin turn, slinging you to the side as it entered a hall of skeletons lazily playing trombones, posing as Napoleon Bonaparte on a horse, riding Zambonis, flying in a skelecopter, and playing each other as xylobones. Air hissed pathetically as they weakly jerked back and forth. It was more hilariously sad than scary. The car shimmied back and forth around an awkward s-turn in the middle, before whipping around into a blacked-out room. 

ROAR!

A wall-eyed Triceratops lunged out of the wall in slow-motion.

TOOT!

A matted mammoth’s trunk flopped around like a limp noodle.

HISSSSS!

A strobe light flashed on a stationary giant snake leaking air like a slashed tire.

RAWR!

Some kind of laughably dated pointy-toothed predator of the giant Victorian iguana variety flailed its arms

The car whipped around again and into the next room. The house of a thousand fire hazards! Finally a real threat considering the park’s history!

A glowing stove flapped its mouth-like door around, revealing a baby in a pie inside. A crappy mannequin kid blew out his candles and blew a curtain of (fake) flame where he spit. A toaster ticked conspicuously, then shot flaming toast high in the air. 

HONK!

You were blinded by the lights of a gas tanker truck driven by a guy with a huge cigar, before being swept aside again at the last second.

A hall of gargoyles. Each one stood still, then jerked to life as you passed. All except the last one, covered in decades of dust. Who knew how long it had been broken. Nothing. No life as you passed. Its crudely sculpted heavy brows and dark eye shadows and blocky face reminded you of the operator. Or rather, he reminded you of a gargoyle. 

And then, out of the corner of your eye, the dusty gargoyle finally moved. Just a normal mechanical jerk like the others, but dust was thrown everywhere. It hung in the air like a snow flurry. You must have just witnessed a miracle, but the hacking and coughing wasn’t worth it.

A tesla coil crackled as fake lightning pretended to strike another gargoyle and break it. And the air burst into flame, the fireball fed by air gushing from another busted animatronic. It devoured the wood and foam construction of the Ghost Train, rapidly crawling across the walls as you were haplessly tugged along by the whims of the cart, trapped in a literal cage. 

You bent over the best you could and covered your face and started screaming for help as the car whipped into the next room, already starting to fill with smoke and flames. Various stock horror monsters were melting in the heat and tipping over. The further you went, the more they began to mechanically fail. You squeezed the grab bar tight in fear, praying that power wouldn’t cut out until you reached the end. It got hotter and hotter inside and hard to breath. You held your sleeve over your face in vain attempt to filter the air. 

Flames were already eating at the hall of mirrors the cart meandered through, its slow pace making you anxious. Your throat hurt from the smoke and heat and screaming. The melting faces of various monsters were reflected back in the mirrors, metal bones visible through the disintegrating latex and foam. The cart ground to a halt as the power cut off. You were trapped, the heat and flames closing in.

But then, you were met by the human face of the operator in the mirror, come to your rescue.

“GET ME OUT GET ME OUT GET ME OUT!”

Your voice was hardly coherent anymore. He nonchalantly kicked the emergency release pedal for the lapbar on the side of the cart and helped you out.

Wait a second.

You looked at his reflection, then at him.

A pale-faced monster with burned black hair, scorched empty sockets, and a sinister, delighted grin greeted you.

“Run. No fun going after helpless prey without the thrill of the hunt.”

He sneered even harder, his face a warped cartoon between the heat and his inhumanly extreme expressions.He stepped aside to let you dash through into the blazing maze. 

You blitzed through the burning rubble, your smaller size an advantage in the cramped quarters. You weaved around dripping, torched vampires and demons silently screaming for mercy as their flesh melted away. Cultists and their victims both turned to burnt offerings. Pale sheet ghosts blackened and melted into tarry messes. Which way was even out? You had no idea, just kept running and praying fate would guide you. Unfortunately, the creature had the advantage of longer legs and being unbothered by the smoke. You darted back and forth erratically, slipping through tight spots to stall him. 

Aha! A small gap in the scenery he’d never fit through! You dove in, taking a decent breath finally as you frantically crawled along the floor and emerged from the other side in smoke-filled zombie ballroom. You swerved between static dancers, their foam and latex faces beginning to peel and sag in the heat, your frantic reflection visible in the mirrored walls.

And the smoldering dark gaze of the operator. You looked back over your shoulder as the monster materialized right behind you. 

“You can hide, but you can’t run from the man in the mirror”

You turned your path straight to the door at the end of the hall as the monster’s human face skipped from mirror to mirror after you, Thankfully, the next room was a dark, dank mine full of ghost miners and birds. No mirrors to be found and lots of props to weave between that weren’t yet ablaze. You clambered around in the near darkness, feeling around for the end of the room from the pinpricks of light shining through the facade’s joints. The smoke and flames were fast approaching behind you. 

And then you saw a light. A lift hill leading up to open air, where you could probably jump out of this hellhole. You scrambled to your feet and dashed up towards the light, freedom in sight. The further you went, the more you choked on the toxic air and your head grew hazy. You knew you’d make it somehow. But the shorter and shorter distance just felt longer and longer as you slowed and weakened. 

The creature materialized and stretched across the exit like a hideous spider, smiling horribly.

“Oh, you poor fool. Don’t you know smoke rises?”

Due to the lack of people in the park, the authorities didn’t think much when they came across what looked like just another mannequin. Until they hoisted it up to haul it away and it fell apart too organically to be a prop. It was an unrecognizably charred body. Fortunately, they were able to identify it based on dental records. That one percent was precious, especially considering the zero percent of the operator ever found, who may as well have turned to smoke and flew off into the sky without a trace.

**Author's Note:**

> The bit about carousels is a true if little known fact. There’s a bit about MC Illions online that mentions it, but like a lot of old Coney Island history, it can be tough to track down much detail on online (partly why this story doesn’t take place there, plus those parks were virtually gone by the KISS era). 
> 
> Aspects of the fire take inspiration from several irl events
> 
> -The dust is just from powder fires in general, not sure if a tesla coil could ignite it, but hey, fun kinda Frankenstein symbolism there.
> 
> -Being trapped in a train through an inferno, then stalled by an electrical short, and the running up to safety but choked by smoke are based on the Kaprun Tunnel Fire
> 
> -The whole mirror thing is just from the various pictures of Gene with mirrors


End file.
